Quickly she buttons her nightgown, slips her arms into the sleeves of her mauve bathrobe, and leans over the bed to lift Nicholas up to her shoulder. She begins to softly pat and rub his back as he raises his head, unsteadily at first, to look around. She’ll wait on the nappy change; he would need another in a few minutes, anyway.

The voices continue to amplify, becoming more distinct as she descends the carpeted steps, nosing Nicky’s fluffy head. Ted must be at the cooker. Assia’s deep, gritty voice is the one she couldn’t make out from upstairs, layered with Frieda’s high, singsong trill. That’s all, just the three of them. Sylvia turns the corner into the sunny back kitchen and sees Ted, as expected, in a pair of rumpled khaki Bermudas and an untucked pullover before the gleaming black face of the Aga, against a backdrop of shiny copper pots. Assia, shoeless but dressed in blue jeans and a plain blouse, is seated at the big oak table—her own table, in fact, a detail she teased through the dinner conversation several times last night. Sylvia’s spattered copy of The Joy of Cooking is open on a chair, Homeric, and a stack of her prized, well-thumbed Ladies’ Home Journals slump at Assia’s elbow, but Assia faces out, toward another chair on which Frieda, in a diaper and her pajama top, is assembling the elements of her miniature china tea set piece by piece. Sylvia squats under the kitchen’s thick wooden lintel, cradling Nick’s head with one hand and the stone door frame with the other for balance, to meet Frieda’s squeal and kiss with her own.

“Good morning,” Sylvia croaks to the room, wincing at the echo of her own voice clanging in her skull.

Ted has stepped away from the bacon and frying potatoes to lean sideways toward Sylvia, greeting her with a brush of his lips. “Shall I put on your water for coffee?” he asks.

“Please. And make tea for the two of you. Did you pull out the rest of that ginger cake to warm?”

Ted nods and adjusts the kettle before stepping across the hall into the larder.

She turns to Assia at the table. “I trust you slept better than I did. Where’s David?”

“My sleep was glorious!” Assia crows, stretching her arms. “How could it not be, in this paradise riotous with spring? I woke to the sun lighting up the branches of your elm tree, and then the birds started under our window. David’s still in bed, but I couldn’t resist the morning light. Maybe I’m not the city girl I always assumed I was.”

“Ah, but after the riot of spring comes the ruin of winter,” says Ted with mock gravity, returning with half of a cake carefully wrapped in waxed paper.